OG 1.011?? AG IPA. What did I do wrong?

Hoping to avoid posting, I've read through many, many posts about people not hitting their target OG, but none quite the same situation as I have.

I was brewing an AG recipe for a Racer 5 clone. This is only my second AG, but the first (a St. Rogue Red Ale clone) has been in the bottle for almost 4 weeks and is awesome, so perhaps I had inflated confidence. All went well with the mashing process, I hit the all the temps, right amounts of grain and water, and the color was actually a little darker than I anticipated for a Racer 5 clone. Nevertheless, the boil went as expected and I cooled, transferred to primary fermentor (had about 6 gal post boil so no new water added) and took an OG . . . 1.011. I doubted it, so i tinkered a bit with the positioning of the hydrometer in case it was stuck, and still the same. Tested plain water, and it was 1.000.

I went ahead and pitched the yeast and it was bubbling within 18 hours, but finished within 48 hours. It's still in primary (10 days now, with no action in 8).

2 things come to mind as possible culprits (beside simply a faulty reading for whatever reason): First, this being my second AG, I really don't know what a good crush on the grain should look like. I used the grain mill at the local brew store, and ran it through twice. Same store and grain mill from which I got my first batch for the Rogue clone 3 wks prior, for which I only ran through once and hit all the right OG/FG readings. But being new, I still don't know exactly what the crushed grain should look like - - to me it didn't look THAT much different than it did before the crush, but just chalkier; it didn't look broken up or ground up, and there was little any powder.

The second issue was that inside my mash tun (chest cooler), i was using a 3' braided stainless steel as a filter, and i think a lot of grain may have gotten under it, resulting in much of the liquid being drained coming from high in the grain bed.

But 1.011? Even with uncrushed grain, is that possible? In all the posts I've read, I don't see anything CLOSE to that low, regardless of what's gone wrong. Any ideas? (and I'll gladly accept brewmaster-error feedback if that's the problem).

Grain bill:

12.5 lb Pale Malt(2-row) America
1.8 lb Wheat Malt America
0.7 lb Crystal 20L America
0.5 lb Caramel Pils Malt Belgium

The only thing I could think of would be the crush. Perhaps someone changed the spacing on the mill at the LHBS?

It will be interesting to see what the FG is.

+1 on the crush but if that was it you should have noticed that the mill didn't crack any of the grains, that OG would be ridiculously low. That OG is so far out of whack if the grain were crushed even very poorly the OG would be higher than that.

What was the temperature of the sample you took? If it wasn't cool yet, the OG would read low. Is it possible it was still warm? Either way, signs of fermentation are good, as you probably wouldn't have gotten that if the OG had really been that low.

Wow that is seriously low. That works out to 11% Mash efficiency. Even at 50% you should of been around 1.050. I'd say either your crush or your thermometer are drastically off.

I always check the gravity after mashing and change the hop schedule accordingly.
My first mash efficiency was 45% and after I started stirring the mash every 15 minutes or so, the efficiency has been over 70%.

Thanks for the feedback.

The temp when I took the reading was right about 70 . . . can't remember exactly but close enough that a temp correction would make little difference. I hope it was a faulty reading, either equipment or operator error. I'll go ahead with the process (which calls for dry hopping) and take a reading then, and post the results. I'll also stop into the LHBS and ask some questions about their mill and for some guidance (which I should have done when I purchased the grain to begin with).

Did you taste the wort at all? 1.011 would have tasted very similar to tap water.

I'm thinking there's no way that if you cracked the grains at all and hit all your temps and times you would end up with efficiency that bad. How much wort did you extract? Did you batch sparge? If you pulled 6 or 7 gallons of pre-boil wort from the MLT I can't imagine that your efficiency could have been THAT poor, even if you did leave some sugars behind in the tun...

My vote on this goes to one of the following options (possibly both):

- somehow you got a sample of your wort that wasn't representative of the whole thing--did you add any water at the end to top up? You might have been sampling mostly water
- did you correct your SG reading for temp? If your temp was high, that would cause your SG to read low. However, not THAT low--even at 150F, the correction is only 12 points SG. But this may have been part of the problem?

Let us know what the FG is, and how the beer turns out.

I could be wrong, but if he said the color was a touch darker than the original, wouldn't that mean that there was at least some sort of major conversion with the sugars? correct me if that's a faulty assumption...

At what point did you pull your sample? did you take a pre boil og reading, or just after the wort was cooled? I usually check my preboil gravity just incase it is low and adjust with boil time or even a little extract. Let us know how it turns out!

jdopchibrew said:

I could be wrong, but if he said the color was a touch darker than the original, wouldn't that mean that there was at least some sort of major conversion with the sugars? correct me if that's a faulty assumption...

Click to expand...

I was thinking the same thing--color isn't ALWAYS an indicator of good conversion (a little black patent can make water the color of ink without raising the gravity very much), but all else equal, getting deep color in your mash is probably a good sign. As I said before, 1.011 wort would probably have a noticeably watery flavor, and possibly would even look weak. If I remember the OP correctly, the grain bill was relatively light in terms of SRM, so having a darker color would (I think) indicate at least reasonably OK conversion.

jdopchibrew said:

I could be wrong, but if he said the color was a touch darker than the original, wouldn't that mean that there was at least some sort of major conversion with the sugars? correct me if that's a faulty assumption...

At what point did you pull your sample? did you take a pre boil og reading, or just after the wort was cooled? I usually check my preboil gravity just incase it is low and adjust with boil time or even a little extract. Let us know how it turns out!

Click to expand...

Color would not be any indicator of conversion, but rather extraction. He could have extracted the colors and starches, and left them all unconverted.

To get an OG that low, I would think that the grains would have been left whole and uncrushed...

The OP said there wasn't much visual difference between the crushed and uncrushed grain. Said it didn't look broken up. There's a pretty big difference in appearance between grain before and after a proper crush, so I'd still think a large potion of the husks weren't broken so no starches available to convert and extract.

Qhrumphf said:

The OP said there wasn't much visual difference between the crushed and uncrushed grain. Said it didn't look broken up. There's a pretty big difference in appearance between grain before and after a proper crush, so I'd still think a large potion of the husks weren't broken so no starches available to convert and extract.

Click to expand...

That was my first guess, but he said he milled it twice! Very strange...

what about thermometer error on the mash temps? I have a digital cooking thermometer that is over 10 degrees off in that range....

I'll ask the question to the theory experts...if you were shooting for a mash temp of say 154....and the thermometer was off by 10 degrees so the actual mash temp was 164...how much conversion would take place? You would get plenty of color and the wort would even have "thickness" What about a larger temp error...at 170 degrees? Seems like one of the more reasonable explanations??

Thoughts?

jdopchibrew said:

That was my first guess, but he said he milled it twice! Very strange...

Click to expand...

If someone messed with the spacing on the mill at the LHBS and set it too far apart, you could run it through as many times as you want and not get the job done. My theory is the first batch where everything was right, the spacing on the mill was where it should have been. Then between that batch and this one someone increased the gap.

Search for 'how's my crush' on here and you should see pictures of well crushed grain to give you a nice visual aid. Also check thermometer in ice bath and boiling water. And then, you should probably check the hydrometer with at least 2 control points, water, and then somekind of mix of sugar water. Checking it in water only tells you that it measures accurately in water, this DOES NOT confirm whether the instrument measures accurately at all ranges. So...an idea would be;

table sugar has the potential for 1.046 (per lb per gallon)

Dissolve 1/8 lb in 1/8 gal, measure and gravity should be 1.046. To get really scientific you technically need three control points, so now toss another 1/8 lb sugar in the same solution, gravity should be 1.092.

Basically Im thinking, better check all your bases, instruments, etc while you're at it. If you can make yourself confident in your instruments now it will be easier to find your other sources of error as your brewing develops. I check thermometer/hydrometer twice a year (when I remember!).

OK I'm certainly no expert, but I would suspect that if that were the case he would essentially end up with a higher gravity but very few fermentable sugars, no? Like maybe his OG would be close to what he wanted but the fermentation would end up way high?

Just a guess.

Is it possible you could have lost a ton of heat during the mash? Did you take a temp reading of the mash at completion? I know you said the tap water read 1.000 but is it possible the piece of paper in your hydrometer slipped out of place?

The only way you could end up with gravity that low is:
A.) mash uncrushed grain.
B.) mash at less than 100 degrees F.
C.) have instruments that are measuring incorrectly and your gravity is really higher.

I just can't imagine any possible other "mistake" that would result in gravity that low.

Maybe somehow drawing the water off the top of the mash into the boil kettle, while not drawing any from beneath the mash I suppose? But that would be tough to do.

How similar did your crushed grain look to uncrushed grain? That would be the most likely problem. There really are not very many ways to get 1.011 gravity out of a mash - even if you do everything wrong.

Sorry I never updated this. You were all very helpful, and it was definitely the crush (or should I say, non-crush). I took Odin's suggestion and just googled "how's my crush" and quickly learned that my grains were nearly whole. As Hollis predicted, I apparently extracted colors but no sugars. Thermometer and hydrometer are fine, OG indeed was 1.011. I did bottle it, but ended up dumping all of it because it was just horrible . . . like a bitter and hoppy club soda, entirely undrinkable.

The lesson I learned (aside from grain-crushing) was to communicate with the good folks at the LHBS when I'm not sure of something, and also to check the gravity after mashing/before boiling. Thank you all for your help, and again, sorry for not updating sooner.

Sorry to hear you had such a bad AG experience.

Chances are you will always have problems with the crush from that LHBS, or pretty much any other. If the guy (or gal) who milled the grain has no clue about mill calibration and what the milled product is supposed to look like, you're always playing craps. Most LHBS have their gap set way too wide. Sells more grain and avoids stuck mashes.

I'd say save up for your own mill, $150 will get you a nice MM-2. Or team with an other brewer. The point is you want to be in control.

Sucks man, I stopped using my LHBS mill for the inconsistency issues. Spend $40 on a corona mill and model it after this thread. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/my-ugly-junk-corona-mill-station-90849/

There is a metric Cr@p ton of information in there all thrown around. I've been using that milling setup and have been hitting ~80% efficiency. Some have reported higher.